Meet The Marketing Genius Working with Red Bull, Nike & ASOS

19:52Sedge Beswick:And the agency that did win the work ended up losing the work and it came back down to us. And it was like all in, it was full on, but it was very much around eBay had a reputational issue that people thought that maybe you would shop on eBay and get fakes. So they changed that and they brought in authenticity guarantee. So you could purchase off eBay and you knew what you were getting was legit. And then the second thing is you had all of these kind of smaller businesses, but specialist businesses from Goat to StockX, and then you have this flipper culture. So what you have at the heart of the community is people who actually want to wear the product, not being able to access the sneakers, to not be able to access the limited drops because all of the bots were just reselling them.

20:35Sedge Beswick:And so eBay wanted to basically get in, you know, we are authenticity guarantee. You can get these sneakers with us, but you could also get them at affordable prices because it's not about flippers and mental, you know, numbers for limited Jordan runs and stuff. And the most incredible thing about eBay is they very much gave us creative control. So again, when you think about partnering with agencies, agencies can often be the scapegoat that didn't work. Well, that's because the agency or they didn't hit that deadline. That's why. or, but you've gone through so many rounds of amends or feedback or, you know, gone to the head of marketing, gone to the marketing director, gone to the CMO.

21:09Sedge Beswick:You don't really recognize what's being distributed at the end of it. And there was none of that with eBay. There was very much like, you are our agency of choice. You're shit hot when you do what you do, off you go. And we did some of the most incredible activations within sneakers from taking over Morley's chicken shop and having the sneaker community down and having like grown men in tears because they could get limited runs and they could get them at the price that you would have been if you popped into Selfridges Offspring. And then you also had Corrupt FM, which had a long form content series to it.

21:40Sedge Beswick:But then they were also like on Instagram stories, we are going to be selling 30 pairs of trainers at retail price that we've got from eBay. And again, you've got queues of like thousands, we actually had to shut that one down, thousands of people trying to get their hands on these, and you only could find about, found out about it if you followed Corrupt FM and Corrupt FM worked because they are all sneakerheads and it wasn't just Nike. You had Puma, Addy, New Balance. And so you again, tapped into the whole of the sneakerhead community rather than like one siloed group. And every single thing we did in terms of every KPI, it was smashed.

22:16Sedge Beswick:In terms of market share, eBay were, I think still to this day, still at the top when it comes to UK market and sneakers. How would you set up a campaign for success like that? But yeah, that one's fun and interesting because there's so many different pockets to success. So we also did stuff at Sneaker Calm. We also did obviously long form, short form, storytellers, celebrity, every level you could possibly imagine. But I think with any campaign, and again, one of the things I think people get wrong constantly is not knowing what good looks like before they start. And it's very much just like a knee-jerk reaction.

22:47Sedge Beswick:Fuck it, I've got an extra 20 grand. Let's just do something. And especially in the creator space, it still happens. And then again, you get to the end and you're like, I think it was good. but you have no fucking clue because you did not set out upfront what good looks like, what KPIs you actually want to hit. And so that's where I would start with any level of any area of marketing. When you're working with brands, like what do you look at when you're assessing, you know, where, what they're doing well versus what they're not doing well? My job now is very much like at a strategy level. So helping them to really understand like what the business goal is.

23:21Sedge Beswick:Why are they even doing this? Is influencer even the right channel? Is performance the right channel? Is CRM? And how do all those things work cohesively together? And again, what often happens in this side of marketing is, oh, social's working. We're just an extra person. Oh, that seems to be working. We'll just throw an influencer manager in. Oh, okay. Well, we need something here. And then you end up with this growing team and the nuts and bolts don't work together. And often that needs, which is very hard when you're internally internal and there's a lot of jobs to do, but is that setback of like, does the structure of this business actually work?

23:52Sedge Beswick:And are we still working and operating on the right platforms for our customer? And so that's always kind of the gig is taking that step back, pausing, which no brand or no business ever does. And I was definitely guilty of that. And just making sure that things are operating and everything is working up to the bigger goal, rather than everything being these like small, quick tactics. And again, I think when you look at so many brands, so confusing for the consumer because they've got 10 different messages coming out from 10 different areas of the business and when you take that step back and you look you're like and again it's very easy to be me and to come in and do that as a job that I am paid to do but really less is absolutely more and making sure that nothing contradicts that you're not overwhelming your consumer that your consumer can go onto your Instagram page or they can go onto your site they go onto your PLC and you're saying the same thing you are repeating that same message my favorite Nielsen stat is you have to see something from a brand 11.4 times before you convert.

24:47Sedge Beswick:Daniel Priestley talks about you have to see something from a personal brand 11 times before you understand it, before you convert. And then that cycle keeps starting again. So when you've got brands that are constantly swapping and changing, moving influences about they didn't work for that one post, so I'll try someone new. Oh, I tried a podcast for three months, it didn't work, so I'll change it again. It's the long game. You have got to make sure that less more, this is what we are focusing on and doubling down on. These are the influences that we're backing and we'll support and help them to make sure it works for them, that it works for us.

25:18Sedge Beswick:It's like the oldest tale in the book of that consistency in messaging, making it clear and making sure whoever arrives on your site, on your PLC understands what it is that they do. Again, I used to say this when I did any level of social presentation when I was very old working in social, but if you wouldn't say it to your mate in a pub, you wouldn't say it on social. And if someone in the pub can't articulate your brand from following you or purchasing with you or remember what it is that they're even wearing, you're not doing your job right. Is that the first step that you ask them to reassess and look at is what is that one line?

25:52Sedge Beswick:Yeah, yeah, yeah. What is the purpose of the business? Like what is your conviction point? What do you stand for? Are you passionate about? And then you look at all of the different touch points and work out whether they're saying the same thing. And then you go into the performance and the data of are they actually working for you? And often, again, social creator will always be my default go-to, the teams are really small or the agency budgets are really small. So then you have to dial down or change expectation. And you can do a hell of a lot with one person, a hell of a lot with two people, especially again, you can use Claude, you can use ChatGPT to support and help you in that data point, but you need that real human thought and process and that gut feel to then make it work for your audience.

26:33Sedge Beswick:But again, when you're in this just cycle and I've been there, worked at Red Bull, I've worked at ASOS, do this, do this, do this. Like I used to get to my desk every day at ASOS and I would have probably 30 items of clothing over my chair with post-it notes, not selling, do an Instagram, not selling, put this on Facebook. You're like, well, let's, why is it not selling? Why is that not right for our customer? Actually is changing the model going to work better first and foremost? We used to have this model called Billy Huxley and another guy called Elijah, actually called Stephen, but you know, had a show name.

27:03Sedge Beswick:And anytime we put those guys in product, it would sell. So it was like, before you come to marketing to panic, let's make sure that we are distributing that content from a sales perspective, right, first and foremost. And maybe then I don't need to have a knee jerk reaction, but equally I was 24 or 25. So if the CMO is coming to my desk to say, fucking promote this, I'll be like, all right, no problem. It'll be up in an hour. So again, it's like, I come in as bad cop, but here to support and to help. And also those team members that can feel overlooked. and again I am sure you've had this where people go well why does ASOS only have x million Instagram followers but Topshop irrelevant now because they bought have this many and it would be coming from someone in the c-suite's daughter going Topshop have more following you're like well let's look at the sales data let's get into that let's look at the performance metrics so it's again coming back down to the like why and it is far better to have the right people in your audience that are going to convert that are going to engage that are going to help you change and shape the business than having the wankiest following number.

28:03I hope you're enjoying this episode with Sedg. If you want to implement her frameworks, I'm going to put a full breakdown of all of them in my next newsletter. You can get a copy completely for free at the link in the description. Now let's get back to this week's episode. What are those other mistakes people make then? It was interesting you just said that there's like a lot of chopping and changing in strategy and approach. Is that one of the others in terms of like committing to something?

28:31Sedge Beswick:Yeah. Committing to an influencer, committing to a format. Yeah. I think, I think you've got to commit to things for far longer than people realize you do in marketing. And I think there's that panic and fear. So then you try something else, you try something else, you try something else. And I've worked with brands where we, something has worked really well. It might be like denim campaign. You're like, well, it's not broke. Let's not fix it. The next time it comes into denim season, we might tweak or change or enhance, but the fundamentals are still there in the same campaign, which makes it easier for the customer to grasp what is going on.

29:02Sedge Beswick:And again, all of the sales data would always support that. Some things do get bored, some things get tired. Again, worlds change, behavioural travel change, big things happen like wars and the way people emotionally feel is different and certain things might not work. So you've still got to have the adaptability to change, but you've also got to invest in things that are going to perform over time rather than instantly. And in terms of like team teams, like how do you encourage them to push back to their like CMO or their COO on things? I mean, I would always encourage anyone to push back, but you also have to, there's different personality types, different ways of working and different things work for different people.

29:43So I would always say you've got the insight, you've got the data behind you, have the confidence yourself to be able to articulate that back and to really be able to explain your why, why behind you're doing that, why behind who you've chosen, why behind

29:58Sedge Beswick:that investment. often again the bigger the organization gets the less opportunity you have to go to the CMO to be able to show them how good you are and that's one of the things that was I genuinely believe has helped me in my career ASOS really cultivated the environment where I could go and knock on Nick Robertson's door he didn't have an office door but I could literally pop to his desk and be like I've got this idea and we were doing lives on Twitter and obviously look at what's happening 15 years later everything is live everyone is training teams around presenting and being able to sell things quickly and TikTok shop or the rest of it.

30:30Sedge Beswick:But we were doing that years ago and driving unbelievable success for the business. But it was just like kind of 10 grand. And I just see what happens here. And that trust in his team was really there, which then obviously create an environment where you could talk very openly about what's working, what's not working, what we want to change, what we want to do differently. There's probably a lot of, I guess, creators, marketers, maybe agency owners listening to this. how do you suggest that they pitch ideas internally or to brands depends on the person because I am I am the type of person who's very obviously extrovert I'm sure you could probably tell that and I get very excited so when I have done like strength test in the past it comes back as like passion enthusiasm and it's like tap into all of those things so it makes it really easy for people to almost buy into what I'm saying because I'm like this is the best thing I've ever seen but again I appreciate there are other people that are introverts so I would again less is more make it incredibly simple for people to understand what it is that you are selling telling them and make sure that you have the insight and the data behind and again if you take it from an agency perspective I have seen so many credentials for agencies that are like 80 90 pages long no one has the time to read that and also you think so many things are important to you.

31:47Sedge Beswick:So you're adding in what your AI offering is and your 20k studies, because it might be a beauty brand and it might be a sneaker brand and it might be a whatever brand. But again, the power is always in less is more. Being so succinct in your messaging that everyone can take it and articulate it outside of this room. You drove a lot of business from your personal brand, right? Yeah. What are the fundamentals there? Like what works? I think the big thing that I would emphasize here is that I drove leads for my business through my LinkedIn. Like it was like 75 % of the clients that we had at my agency were from my LinkedIn, but I did not have, and I still don't have a big LinkedIn following.

32:26Sedge Beswick:And so for me, it's very much about quality and actually getting people to convert rather than being the loudest person shouting. And obviously, again, I fundamentally believe that if you, it is easier to sell to multiple people by getting that message out to an audience of 15 ,000, 1500 ,000 than it is selling one-to-one. And it was really easy when I had the agency. It was very much like I've worked in Influencer forever. I worked in it when we were called key opinion leaders, when we were getting graffiti artists to have Red Bull cans in their hands at 3am when they were, you know, doing whatever they were doing in Nottingham through to obviously ASOS was very much a YouTube blogger, blogger era through to Influencer and obviously now Creator.

33:07Sedge Beswick:So I've seen the space really evolve, but I've worked in it. And so I could have my proof essentially of like, I've been there, I've done that, I've worn the t-shirt, but I was always very much around, again, sounds a bit TikTok and cheesy, but like, I never wanted to gatekeep. I wanted everyone to be able, I wanted everyone to do it because I knew it worked. So whether it was with me or whether it was another agency or whether it was in-house or whether it was someone leaving uni going, fuck it, I can make a career out of this. It was very much give people the tools to be good. And what I then found is I'd be going into pitches and they'd be like, I got promotion because of you.

33:38Sedge Beswick:Because I kept going onto your LinkedIn page and I'd be saying, I've learned this, I've learned this, I've learned this. And I could put all of that into action. And that's why when we have budget for an agency, you're the first person I called. And then they already knew, like they felt like they knew me. They knew, like I, again, I will always be the same on social as I will chatting to you as I would be with my husband. And again, people buy from people. So the more real, the more you, the more human that you can be, the better. And so I'd say with anyone looking to kind of build out that personal brand, don't get distracted by the big vanity metrics.

34:08Sedge Beswick:The same thing I would say to a brand, what are your three Ps? Do not get distracted by having the biggest number possible on any of your channels. Clout is one thing, but actually conversion is the thing that you want. You want to be making money. If you are the person that is talking on social, you're not doing it because you want to be able to say to your mate in the pub, I've got a million followers on LinkedIn. That isn't going to do anything. And so for me, I come back to my three Ps, which is like, what is your perspective? Like, what is your view? What is your opinion? What do you know that other people don't know?

34:38Sedge Beswick:What is your proof? What have you, so again, coming back to, I'd worked in influencer forever. I can credibly talk about influence marketing and my views and opinions. Even if people have conflicting views, like I've still kind of got my war wounds of working in the space for so long to be able to tell my view there. And then you've got your personality. And I think that's such an important one now, again, when everyone is using various automated tools to help them out, people buy from people. So you have to be human. You have to bring out your personality. You have to make sure that people are buying from you, that what you are saying on LinkedIn, what you're saying on Instagram, what you're saying on YouTube, what you're saying on a podcast, they all tell the same story.

35:15Do you find any of them more effective? LinkedIn, Instagram, YouTube?

35:18Sedge Beswick:I had a service led business. So I actually only ever did LinkedIn and I was very much, and again, we're talking 15 years ago, right? So no one else was really, it wasn't competitive. I didn't I probably had 300 people on my LinkedIn page but they were all 300 people that were thinking about social that were thinking about influencer and I was just there feeding them the insight feeding them the data I did not do it thinking that that was going to be my new business driver yeah and when I left ASOS and I put my first LinkedIn post up to be like oh my god I have an influencer agency I was really really surprised by the amount of inbound I then had from people who'd worked with me that had gone well I know what she does and I know how she does it So like, let's get her in and let's get that cracking.

35:59Sedge Beswick:And what actually happened really for the first six months of the business was sorting out people's social first. And then I was like, okay, cool. Now that's sorted. Now we can start to do creator influencer. And so right now I think LinkedIn is incredibly noisy. So again, that personality bit, really having your unfair advantage point being the thing that you talk about will allow you to stand out. But if you are trying to sell mascara, LinkedIn is not going to be the right platform for you. If I was starting a business today, and I wouldn't because I'm exhausted already, but like I would be setting up a TikTok shop business, an agency all around TikTok shop.

36:36Sedge Beswick:That is the most interesting, exciting space. So again, if I was then trying to sell mascara, TikTok shop would be the place that I would start with that business. So again, you have to really think about what is your product? Who is the customer that you want to have? And where are they showing up? And where are they engaging and do less better. So it might be that you only nail TikTok shop or if you're service led, you might only nail TikTok and you're talking about how to grow your business or what your war wounds and stories are, whatever it might be that is your thing that you can bring to life.

37:06Sedge Beswick:And I've managed to get leads off TikTok. I've managed to get leads off YouTube, but what I do has evolved and changed as well. That's really interesting about TikTok shop. Is that, do you think that's the big, one of the biggest opportunities in at the moment? Is that one of them? I think so. With my agency hat on, I have had so many sleepless nights about whether I should find someone, invest in someone, and it would be TikTok shop. It would be production that is female focused. I do have a sports marketing agency, again, much more around content first, rather than the celebrity athlete and really focusing around women in sport.

37:41Sedge Beswick:But the TikTok shop is the one that I think in if if your goal is to sell a business and make cash I think most TikTok agencies will be selling in the next 18 months to three years and that's going to be the big goat agency level buyouts why is that just because people are crushing it on their brands I think the results are amazing I think there's a real fine art to be able to do it and to do it properly, future of shopping, ease of shopping. And most big agencies can't do it. They're not agile. So then they're either white labeling or outsourcing or trying to build in these like specialist teams.

38:17Sedge Beswick:And eventually it gets to a point where the demand is there. So they do a bit of M &A instead. I've heard some insane stories where you have like thousands of creators on there, right? And then you just have that data on what's working, what's not working, and you can boost the hell out of the ones that are working and not working. It's just like, yeah, insane. I think there's a real big misconception with TikTok shop that it cheapens your brand and that it looks tacky and the affiliates are a bit. And I've had a lot of brands again, who will be like, oh, I want to go on TikTok shop. Oh, I'm not sure I won't do it.

38:48Sedge Beswick:But again, that's all down into the brand and how the brand positions it, who the affiliates that they work with are, who they use to be their face from a live perspective. So I really think we're going to get into this curve where we're going to see more luxury brands. obviously it's been very heavy beauty very heavy fmcg um but i think we're going to start to see like luxury brands really dominating in this space and everyone goes fuck i need to take to get onto tiktok shop i need that tiktok shop strategy now you've you've worked with quite a lot of luxury brands right yeah i think luxury is quite an interesting one at the moment because obviously when you think luxury you tend to think lvmh and i've been very fortunate to work with brands that are under the LVMH group, but LVMH is a beast.

39:30Sedge Beswick:And again, there is so much rigor, so much sign off, so much process that goes into actually something going out the door for a Dior, for a Glenmorangie, for an Arbeg. But I think the challenger within the luxury space, and you could argue it's not necessarily luxury in the same way LVMH is, but Emma Greed is an absolute force. And for so long, she has been the like number two operator, growth accelerator behind these huge brands, Good American, Skims. But she is essentially building the modern version of an LVMH grape. And so whilst it's not luxury in the sense of Chanel, it is luxury in terms of experience.

40:09Sedge Beswick:It is luxury in terms of how everything is pulled together. What she is doing full stop is interesting. But I also think the way that if you were to ask me what is the best brand right now, I think it's her personal brand. and I think she really stands for something, has a lot of grit, has a lot of people in a space where there's not a lot of aspirational women in business to look up to that isn't saying I wake up at 4am and I do Pilates and I drink my matcha and I don't shit. You know, like she is so real and everything she does makes it accessible that if you're someone who's thinking about going freelance, you're like, fuck me, I could do that through Emma.

40:43Sedge Beswick:And then she's got the, if you think of the three Ps. She's got the personality and bags of it. She's got her like lived perspective and she's got fucking proofs and bags of it. And so that from a luxury perspective, I think is going to be a real, everything that she touches is going to be really, really interesting. What's her personality? It's kind of like, is it kind of a bit no bullshitty? Yeah, she's very, she grew up in East London. She didn't, it's a bit of a rags to riches for want of a better expression, but she's very, she's grit. She is absolute grit at her fucking core. And I think that's the thing that makes it, she's not, again, I think we see so many women who are confused by how they need to appear.

41:23Sedge Beswick:And so they come across very polished and they're wearing a blazer and a midi skirt and stiletto heels with their hair. And it's like, just be you. And if you've managed to get to that C-suite position or that investor position, like help other people to really be able to relate because you're happy to wear a pair of jeans and you're happy to wear a pair of trainers and you're happy to swear. And that's the thing with Emma is she easily, Emma my mate, she easily could have stayed behind the scenes. She's making a shitload of money, but actually she has, she was leaving cash on the table and she's a businesswoman.

41:56Sedge Beswick:So she's now got Aspire her podcast where she's bringing in the most insane guests possible. and they're giving very tactical takeaway advice that they can put into their businesses. She's then written her book, Aspire. I think she's on a book tour today, like for the next few weeks. And, you know, she's then got brand deals coming in personally through the podcast with tours that she's doing. But everything is her again at every single touch point. It just screams her. Who else do you think is crushing it? The people that I think are crushing it right now, you obviously have like top tier, big name, big amounts of cash, Emma Greed style.

42:34Sedge Beswick:But then I also love like Steph Sword-Williams, who has fuck been humble. And I think she is a marketing force because she is again, so unapologetically her, which is obviously again in her DNA of every touch point. And she's not obsessed with having the biggest following or following influencer tactics so that she can get an extra zero at the end of a check. Integrity is probably the word that I would use for her. But again, when she shows up, she's always in a two-piece. She's always in a co-ord. So that's kind of become her thing. And so she's instantly recognizable. If she's doing a big talk, she's usually in red.

43:09Sedge Beswick:And again, there's all these little signals that trigger who she is, what she stands for, what her personal brand is. And I think she's great on stage. She's really, really inspiring. And I also think that she's not getting sucked into this vacuum of you've got to have the biggest following. You need the vanity metrics. All of that stuff, again makes her far more likable and relatable and someone that you should and wants to work with and like there's everything that she does is hers she owns that you can't have another brand trying to say that they are you know unapologetically humble like that is that's hers so wherever you see it she's really coined and owned that and again I think IP is hugely important it's hugely important in this market and she's done an incredible job from an IP perspective she's very cool yeah she's nailed the message and again it's like the depth yeah it's all about the depth of engagement versus the yeah the views in the vanity i think grace breville is really good as well isn't she i mean she is a perfect example of people buy from people um and obviously again started out as an influencer then started creating product owns a lot of ip there are so many touch points but all of those businesses trade and operate without her so when she goes on maternity leave in a few months time, which I did not successfully achieve, she can breathe.

44:24Sedge Beswick:She can enjoy time with her baby. She can, knowing that all of those businesses operate without her. And when they need a bit of support and they need a bit of a growth accelerator, she can do something on TikTok, a few Instagram stories, and that high impact stuff comes from her too. And how do they do that? They partner with an operator. So most of the businesses that are under the Grace Beverly empire have CEOs in them. right um and so essentially she has positioned herself as a non-exec founder versus a day-to-day founder interesting i mean we saw this with lux collective right where it was very very much about uh ben yeah but it was they were too closely entwined the business and him and his personal brand it's really tough to be an operator and be the face of the business exactly you need an operator yeah yeah and you can focus on what you're great at which is the marketing and i was having this conversation yesterday with a creator where they tried to outsource their marketing and their social um because you know they were they were told that's what they're meant to do right you know if you're meant to um replace yourself in all these roles um and tried to do the operational stuff where and as soon as you started doing that like things started to go south yeah um whereas the smart way that these uh that molly does it or that grace does it is quite clearly they're they're staying in their lane at what they're no one else could create what she creates in terms of the reels and the posts and i know she's got a team that helps her but it's probably her to her core pretty much every single founder should work out very quickly what their superpower is and they should double down on their superpower and free themselves up to be able to focus on it so for me i didn't know this before running the business but i have two superpowers one is i work incredibly quickly.

46:06Sedge Beswick:And so when shit needs to get done, I can just get it done. And two, I can sell. And actually selling in a service led business is really fucking great. And so I really tried to do everything because I was a control freak, because I was like, this is my business. It's my name above the door. But actually I wasn't the best person at creating content. I wasn't the best person at finance. I wasn't the best person at operations. And if I had brought in people to do the things where I was weaker sooner. And I could really focus and double down on that growth piece. No one knew influencer at the time, like I did.

46:42And no one had that same, I very much have an

46:46Sedge Beswick:ethos of say yes and worry later. But again, when no one really knew what influencer was or how it could work. And I was like, yeah, we can make that work. Yeah, we can do that. We can do that. So again, Grace or Grace Andrews keeping and sticking on their content because they're fucking really good at it but bringing in the support team around them that might be the operator to run shreddy to run a productivity method so any founder creator brand agency free yourself up to do what you're really good at how did you balance that though because like that's what um i often think is then the product right is also kind of you and your baby so if you were concentrating on sales and driving growth how do you then ensure that the product kind of delivers to your standards did you just completely remove yourself to it or find like a trusted operator what was the balance there so no i never fully removed myself out of it and actually when i went through my private equity process and they spent an obscene amount of money on due diligence they then relayed where the cracks were in the business um and that some of the hires were like you actually need a full-time CFO.

47:50Sedge Beswick:And I was like, do I? That's like 180 grand plus equity plus bonuses, la la la. And they're like, yeah, if you want to play with the big boys, that's what you need. And actually you then need a HR director. And I was like, oh, if I wasn't dealing with those people problems and I had a HR director, actually that isn't where I'm best suited to. That would help with people problems. That would help with growth from a people perspective. But again, it is that relinquishing of the control piece. But I was very much in every single aspect of the business. I was still meeting clients. I was still doing a lot of the new business.

48:18Sedge Beswick:But again, now on the other side of the fence, doing different things. Like I have to keep reiterating to people like, I'm not not doing this because I don't want to. I'm not doing this because either the sacrifices that I get to spend time with my kids and that's not an option or because I'm actually, you're better than me at doing that. Or there is, so again, I have no issue in spending money to make money. But again, I kept a very tight purse strings when I ran the business. And it was only when I really started spending that I was like, oh, we can really start to grow quicker, faster, at a kind of higher rate here.

48:50Sedge Beswick:So again, I think anyone again running their business, it might be as simple as hiring a VA. I'm super excited to say that this episode is produced by 7x Content, my own podcast agency. We work with eight top 10 podcasts globally for huge, fast-growing brands and creators. So if you'd like to create a podcast in 2026, I'd love to hear from you. you can check us out at 7xcontent.com or apply to work with us at the link in the description. I'd love to have a conversation with you. That's really interesting. What was the secret source? You were the first social hirer at ASOS. So what was the secret source in those glory days of ASOS?

49:30Sedge Beswick:So the glory days of ASOS were very much the glory days of ASOS. Like we had a pub that we called 4.2 because that was where the meeting rooms ended and you would be in the pub all the time, but I had no mortgage, no kids, no husband. Like it was fucking good to work there at that time, but you also worked insanely hard. And I think the secret source for ASOS really was the data. We had so much data, we did not even know what to do with it. And this is obviously before TikTok shop, before shop overlays, but we could tell based on each individual post, the ROI that that was having. And it was, you know, enter SKU XYZ into checkout, Michelle Obama wearing an ASOS dress and seeing that item sell out immediately.

50:11Sedge Beswick:But we would take all of that insight, all of that data, and that's all of that knowledge that was what then made the Insider Program. And what did that look like, that Insider Program? Yeah, you would not get away with the Insider Program today, but the Insider Program was fucking great because it worked. Do you know when you have those things on your CV? Not that I need a CV or use my CV anymore, but it'll be there forever. Like that as an example of it, where essentially we looked at all of our key territories. So Germany, France, US, and we looked at all of the sales data for our target customer.

50:42Sedge Beswick:And then we basically went and found people that were trying to get into social, had started dabbling within the social space, but they hadn't made it yet. So they weren't partnering with other brands. They hadn't partnered with any competitors and we paid them really nothing. And they got a monthly allowance that they could spend on ASOS, but we basically gave them a shitload of knowledge. So they had access to our data team. they had access to stylists. I had, they had access to me. They sat within my team where I would help them from a strategic perspective. And anytime you get into that copycat social, I thought, well, that's performed well for that person.

51:14Sedge Beswick:So maybe I'll try it. We're like, no, this is your lane. This is your market. Like this is what really works well for you. And you've got like Freddie Harrell was part of that program. Who's now got a business backed by L 'Oreal. Leonie Han, who I think has like nine, 10 million followers across her channels is on the front row of Givenchy every fashion week possible. So there's like really amazing names. And the thing that's brilliant is like some of those people still get interviewed today or will be on podcast today and they'll be like, yeah, ASOS made that happen for me. And it's that kind of loyalty that decades later still exists.

51:44Why did that work? Because they were, I guess, like in a way they're like underpriced attention. There was a lot of them, right?

51:51Sedge Beswick:Yeah. Yeah. So it probably varied from 10 to 20, 22, fluctuated based on whether we were adding new markets, priority markets for the business. We were very quick to swap people out if things weren't working. But why did it work? It worked because ASOS's customer was very different. Your customer is not a dude that has a black shirt and a black pair of jeans on, like the way that they look, the way that they live, their lifestyles, their cycle of life. And so the people that we selected and the people that we brought into the program all represented a different type of customer. And so there was that kind of, again, identity in, well, that's what it looks like for me and ASOS had obviously a site full of professional models that look fucking unbelievable, even when they're in the canteen.

52:35Sedge Beswick:But that again, isn't the average customer. So we created this real relatability, accessibility in the content that we were producing that obviously then had an impact on how people were going about their days, what they were doing, where they were traveling, as well as what they were wearing. How do you think you can do that in 2026? Yeah, I think the platforms have changed because, and again, I would say this to any creator, to any brand, like you're borrowing your audience if you're only living on Instagram, TikTok, whichever platform it might be. So how do you understand your audience better?

53:04Sedge Beswick:And how do you take people off platform? So we didn't do anything around CRM. We didn't do anything again around performance data. We didn't do anything obviously on Substack. We did nothing long form. So they would be the spaces that I would be playing in of like, how do you take that data and make it work and more ownable for ASOS? And how do you get more of that craft and that storytelling in that kind of, again, ladders up to the bigger picture? Would you like identify 20 influencers and make them brand ambassadors or? I mean, it'd be so much easier today than it would then. Everything was obviously incredibly manual down to, we had someone whose full-time job was just ordering product for them every single day.

53:42Sedge Beswick:Whereas again, the automation makes it simpler to, again, budgets dependent on how many people you want to be able to have in that program to look after them, to scale them, to support them. And Zoom wasn't even a thing. You could have everyone in each market, different language. We were just talking about Hey Jen. You could have Hey Jen to train people up in different languages and stuff. So from that side of things, it's easier. But I also think everything is saturated, but the space is so much more saturated. So getting that growth and that audience retention, that audience followership will be way harder today.

54:12What do you think brands should do instead?

54:14Sedge Beswick:What should brands do instead from a creator program perspective? Yeah. Like how do you build, like it's just so powerful, I guess, isn't it? Having these ambassadors, but I guess nowadays it's very common that they might be so big that they create their own brands themselves, right? It's hard to like have those advocates. I think it's understanding what that creator wants and what their long-term goals are. If they just want some cash for a quick win, that's not really going to work for either party. But if you're working with creators and they might say, this might be a talent manager, I want to have my own business or I've got this idea, invest in them.

54:48Sedge Beswick:I think Andy Varley at Insanity is an unbelievable example of that. He's invested. He sits on the board of Sam Thompson's brand. So you don't, that talent has again, that loyalty, that longevity to stick with you for a long time. And again, when you're thinking about it from a brand's perspective, it's how do you understand them and work with them long-term? And it might be, they've got an idea around long form or they want to launch a podcast and that gives other opportunities for you to partner with them outside of this like very traditional pay to play. You grew your business to like 22 million valuation or so?

55:18Sedge Beswick:We were 2 mil EBIT three years in a row, operating on about a 20 mil revenue. We got a 24 million pound valuation off a 2 mil EBIT. What were the other big lessons in that period or the biggest unlocks? So there were a few amazing things, which was we, I never set up the business to sell the business, but we really grew at pace. And subsequently we needed a different way of working for the business to scale. and we definitely went through this cycle where again post-pandemic everything was very much global first some clients needed us to lead through Japan some needed us to lead through the US as soon as we said we were coming to the US we also signed Lululemon on an absolute whopper of a project and so there was a real reason to go to those markets but the support system that we had around us like they're just not specialists and experts in that space so that's why we decided to put the business on the market and very quickly at the same time go agency sold for their mental, mental offer.

56:12Sedge Beswick:And it was obviously all very quick and that created a lot of hype and excitement in the market. So I think our multiple was high because of the GOAT deal, which was great, but their deal was incredibly quick and incredibly fast. And they were men, which I think unfortunately makes a massive difference. They're also three founders rather than one person who was a founder. And they definitely had experience through family members of buying, selling M &A and stuff as well. Whereas I just didn't have that network. And so I was really out my depth. I was trying to renovate a house. I was found out I was pregnant.

56:46Sedge Beswick:I was between the US and the UK setting up our US arm and trying to win all these other clients. So like I just spread myself way too thinly and that was fucking dangerous. And I also didn't have the balls to be like enough. Like, are you fucking buying it or are you not buying it? So we had three very serious, similar scale offers on the table. And one of them then very, you've recently had the person went and acquired another influencer agency off the back of it. So again, once you're in that hype and excitement and people want influencer agencies, and it was just fucking me off more and more because mine was being dragged out and I was the one with a hard deadline.

57:20Sedge Beswick:But it taught me a lot about business and I have a completely different network around me now. And if I was to run an agency, a TikTok shop agency launching tomorrow, I know all of the nuts and bolts that I would bring to make sure that the multiple would be high if I was to exit that in three to five years. And what are they? Don't make a business too reliant on you. Don't have client dependency and client reliance too much on one area. Hire your senior personnel quicker and have something fucking unbelievably ownable. Data, IP, all of that stuff is going to increase your value. And the US is hard.

57:57Sedge Beswick:So do the US properly. Would you advise someone to start an agency? Because it seems like there's a lot of talented people out there. let's take a Grace Andrews, for example. She leaves the diary of a CEO. She's obviously got some expertise there. Just a few. Just a bit. She could spin up an agency. She could be like a consultant. She could be a creator. There's so much that you could do. What would you recommend someone does? What do you think are the most interesting? Because the agency seems like a slog and it seems intense versus some of the other things. I know like all businesses are hard, but do you have a take on that?

58:39Sedge Beswick:I think all businesses are hard and I don't think setting up a business is for everyone. Yeah. And so I think we've really glorified this entrepreneurialism. It's sexy. You get to have blow dries and you get to sit on podcasts. That's not, that is 1 % of like the gig. Yeah. And it's really emotionally draining. It is full on. There are sacrifices that you never even can compute. And there is a lot of sleepless nights and cashflow is the fucking grimest thing on the planet. And so I will always say to people, you really need to think about whether you actually want the responsibility and to run your own business.

59:15Sedge Beswick:And that might be that you decide to keep your stable income and have a full-time job, but you have, again, hate this word, but like a side hustle that is an additional revenue stream, or you might decide to put a percentage of your earnings to one side and then decide to invest in a business and again, high risk, high reward. But I definitely think we're moving into this like more of a portfolio career kind of way of working which I think is what I don't know but I would assume Grace Andrews is going down the route of I can't imagine working with Bartlett would ever make her want to set up an agency because she probably knows too many things and how hard it can be and how brutal it can be but a time of your life me age 27 I could run an agency yeah because I had all the time I had all the energy I had all of the excitement and I was at the right time at the right place.

1:00:04Sedge Beswick:I was early. I would not be recommending that anyone launches an influencer agency today. But again, a TikTok shop business, interesting. You know, there's different things that are happening in the space that if you are early enough, you get the biggest opportunities. But you also have to ask yourself, why are you looking to run a business in the first place? So is it because you want to have an exit and you want to make a lot of money? I tend to think, controversial, those businesses never really tend to succeed. If you are unbelievably passionate about something and you believe it, you can't stop.

1:00:36Sedge Beswick:You can't sleep because you can't stop thinking about it. Those are the businesses that are most successful. And I think when I was 27 and I set up my business, I had seen so much at ASOS. I'd seen so much success. I really believed in it. I couldn't stop talking to everyone and anyone about it. And so again, when I then went and launched a business in it, everyone was like, well, that makes a lot of sense. and like I have an idea for a business but I there's an unbelievable book called The Floundering Founder by Roman Siegel and anyone who runs a business or anyone who's having a dark day should read this book and there is often a thing in me that thinks if I had read that book would I have pulled the nuclear and left the business because so many things I was like oh been there been there and I got in touch with him and him and I chat because there's also the next stage when you then leave a business and it's been your entire life where you then go through this like identity crisis of who am I and why have I got time, but I've also got money.

1:01:31Sedge Beswick:So what should I do? And how do I do this, this, this? So he's an exceptional human and an exceptional book. And it's any, any founder, creator, agency, business owner should read that book. The point being with his, with his book and his ethos and running a business is like, you've got to be willing to put that passion in and to know again, that the sacrifices will be huge. So if you've decided it is for you and you've decided that you are up for it and the timing is right, like the business ideas that I've had, I can't do right now because the timing isn't right because the personal sacrifice is too big.

1:02:02Sedge Beswick:But they don't come down to, I want to have an agency. I've been there, done that, worn the t-shirt, got the war wounds, got it signed. But actually for me, it's like, how do I support other people? So I have something, I have a mental program, it's productized. I have 10 founders where I'm like, I'm really good at marketing and I'm really good at growth and I'm really good at sales. So let me tell you everything and let me help you scale. And also because I don't do any execution, I only have one influencer agency. I have one social agency. I have one affiliate agency. I have one production agency.

1:02:29Sedge Beswick:So I can go, this is who you should be going to because I've vetted them and I know they're shit hot at what they do. And so again, I'm using that like skill and knowledge into something else. But the big business idea is like, well, my daughter starts school in September. So if I want to disappear and not be present for that, well, no chance. so again that's why I come down to timing being such a fundamental part of like are you right to run a business and do you really want it and are you growing it because you want to make a shitload of money or do you want a lifestyle business and I'm very much operating in lifestyle business stage of my life now but again if you want to double down it's about the timing market wise and it's the timing in terms of like personal what you're willing to kind of give up to make that work you've got a sports marketing agency as well did you say so right now I have a lot of little bits and pieces, which isn't necessarily the right way of being.

1:03:14Sedge Beswick:But my goal is to do as many drop-offs and pickups for nursery as possible. So the more remote that I can be, the better. So I have like stable income, which is my mentee program. It is a paid for 10 people, 12 months cycle. And it's like touch for me, but big impact for them. Sound like an idiot saying that, but it's true. I know I can see what I've delivered for people. I then still do consultancy because I know influencer and I can help businesses and I can help them with the structural changes that they need to make. And sometimes just having in that like three month blast of someone can obviously make things happen quicker.

1:03:48Sedge Beswick:Um, and so that is more kind of stable income slash skilled income. Um, I then have a business called next level. So next level is very much a passion project, but it is around, no one will care about your career as much as you do. And when the market it is rough like it is right now, L &D budgets are being cut. In the UK, L &D budgets have been cut by 50%. So unless you, if you are ambitious and you want to succeed in the marketing space, you have got to back yourself and you've got to look after yourself. And so we have like a sub stack, which is just a weekly what's going on in the space. But I really realized that people wanted community and they wanted network and they wanted to be building again, like the people, their number ones around them that are going to champion them and bring them up.

1:04:32Sedge Beswick:So we do supper clubs that are always themed agency founder, female founder. We then do accelerators. So growth accelerators for businesses, and then we do hero events. So we actually just recently did one around creator. I know that I can pull in the best fucking people to speak because I know that topic, but there will become topics that are in marketing that I'm not the best person and we'll happily bring in contributors and consultants to make sure that they are hugely valuable. and there's some insane stat like I think it was 88 % of people who joined that room spoke about it on LinkedIn afterwards and you've got people who are like head of influencer level being like I just learned more in that room than I've done for the last year in my career so that's very much like we don't have loads of big partners and big sponsors and take loads of cash so our message is diluted it's very much like we're here and we're doing stuff with canned lions this year like directly with them and stuff so that's but it doesn't really make me any money at the moment.

1:05:24Sedge Beswick:So that's my like longer term gamble and very much my doing right by doing good. Then I own a third of a sports marketing agency where when I came, I really wanted to do sport. I used to be a professional trampolinist, if you can say that. As a kid, I fucking hate everything that's happening in the women's arena. And I think there's so much more investment and support money that can go into women in sport. So I created a few business plans, got introduced to this exceptional human who's very credible in the sports space. But I didn't want to run the business. So I was like, you can take the idea, you can take the IP, but I'll own a third of it and I'll roll the dice and I'll see what happens in a few years.

1:05:56Sedge Beswick:So that agency works with Jenson Button, Charles Leclerc, Beth Mead, doing some really fucking cool stuff. And I refer leads as and when they come. And then I make a few investments into businesses as well. That's interesting. What's the idea there with the sports agency? The sports agency is called One Legacy and it's very much around helping athletes build their legacy. So again, shitload of data, which I did with this incredible woman from Coots Bank, who looked after the professional athletes division, but very much around like, what are the things that they can build? They've got the profile, they've got the audience, but they've also got the stamina and the routine.

1:06:32Sedge Beswick:And it actually came from, I was at Cannes Beach on the sports beach and I watched Sue Bird speak. And she was talking about losing her identity after sport and basically like that rigor and routine just disappears overnight. The nutrition disappears overnight. And that's why you also see a lot of professional athletes go bankrupt, end up in divorce, because they've been like that since they've had that routine and that support system since they were 11, 12 earlier. And so it's very much whether it's investments, whether it's IP, whether it's, you know, it's very much about, we all aspire for the Michael Jordan effect.

1:07:07Sedge Beswick:So what are the tangible things that you can kind of do and build off? There's something amazing about sports people in the fact that they're so gatekept for so long and you only get these like those very choreographed interviews where the PR person sat behind them. I've done so many shoots where it's like probably a million pound budget but you've got them for 11 minutes. Yeah. And they're not allowed to say anything interesting. So there's just all this pent up need from their fans to actually hear from them. Yeah. I think it's why Drive to Survive like crushed it for Formula One. So that's a super interesting space.

1:07:40I think, have you seen Harlan's YouTube channel?

1:07:43Sedge Beswick:No. Oh, have you not seen that? No. He's only done a few videos but I think that's a really good example of it. That's my viewing on the way home. Yeah, he does. He's like five videos and they're just simple stuff. Like on Halloween, he gets dressed up and he goes and like scares some people in the neighborhood and gives out some treats and stuff. He's got his investment into his hair bubbles as well. Yeah, but it's so compelling, the content. Oh, interesting. Yeah. I'll watch that. Where do you see that going? What does success look like? success looks like with that business really being the support and the go-to for athletes that help them put that determination, that mega ambition and structure into things that allow them to kind of live longer than their game, essentially.

1:08:27Great, Sedge. This has been so good, so useful. I think people are going to love it. Where can people find you if they want to find out a little bit more?

1:08:34Sedge Beswick:I have the most SEO friendly name possible. So Sedge Beswick, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok, anywhere. Amazing. Thanks so much for doing this. No, I appreciate it. Thank you. If you enjoyed this episode with Sedge, I think you're going to love my episode with Michael Corcoran. He talked about brand strategy, marketing and content and social for brands in 2026. And Michael is just a genius. He's ex-Ryanair. He's worked with Gymshark. He is just such a smart thinker when it comes to content and social. And he's just hilarious as well to listen to. So if you enjoyed this conversation with Sedge, I recommend you queue up the conversation with Michael to listen to next.

1:09:09I hope you enjoy it and see you in the next one.